Apple Watch - page 81

Google’s smartwatch platform, Android Wear, has officially gained support for iPhones. The Android Wear for iOS app is currently rolling out and anyone with an iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus can start using the Android Wear app at last. Just make sure you’re running iOS 8.2 or later.

The move comes somewhat randomly but makes total strategic sense for Google.

With Autumn rapidly approaching, marathon season is almost upon us. So if you’re planning on running a race, now’s the time to ramp up your training.

Whether you are doing a full marathon, a half-marathon or a 10K race, here are my top 10 tips for using your Apple Watch to achieve a new personal best.

It’s another week ending, which means its time for us to round up all the great content from Cult of Mac into one delightful Cult of Mac Magazine.

We’ve got all the info we could find out about the upcoming Apple event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in SF, a ton of useful and hidden tips for iOS, Apple Watch (and even OS X), and some fantastic gaming new that you don’t want to miss.

Check it all out (and more) in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine, and don’t forget to look at this sneak peek at the upcoming revamp of the entire digital experience.

If you ignore its share price, Apple is doing incredibly well under Tim Cook, thanks in large part to the success of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. But its newest offerings, Apple Watch and Apple Music, may be off to rocky starts.

This leads us to ask, once again, whether Apple has lost its spark without Steve Jobs. Is the company as exciting or as innovative under Cook? If Apple Watch can’t get us all to wear smartwatches and Apple Music doesn’t put Spotify out of business, does Apple have what it takes to revolutionize another industry?

Join us as we battle it out over those questions in this week’s Friday Night Fight between Cult of Android and Cult of Mac.

We love how easy it is to set up an alarm from the Apple Watch. All you have to do is say, “Hey Siri, wake me up at 7 a.m.,” and the digital assistant will put that order in for you.

But this comes a slight inconvenience: What happens to alarms after you’re done using them? Well, if you’re like me, you just turn them off to stop the horrendous buzzing on your wrist and then forget about them. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s how to clear off all of those old, unused alarms with a quickness.

You no longer have to depend on the Internet to provide you with third-party Apple Watch accessories, as the company has started stocking them in its gleaming, glass-covered retail locations.

The first accessory on offer is a minimalist charging dock that will be compatible with watchOS 2’s Nightstand Mode when the firmware update launches this fall.

Taptic feedback on the Apple Watch felt a little weird at first, but we’ve come to love its gentle nudges to let us know something is going on. But some Cult of Mac staffers have noticed that after time, the taptic feedback has started to feel not so … tappy anymore.

If you’re having this problem, here are a couple quick and easy ways you can try to put the pep back on your wrist.

Swatch has denied that its trademarking of Steve Jobs’ famous “One more thing” phrase was a blatant attempt to troll Apple — arguing instead that it’s part of a new film noir-inspired watch line, referencing Peter Falk’s Columbo character.

Yes, that’ll do. And Android’s blatant borrowing of the iOS interface was just a funny coincidence too, right?

Apple still hasn’t publicly released sales figures for the Apple Watch, but according to Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly, the wearable device is doing great.

“Demand for Apple Watch has been so strong in the stores and online,” Joly told analysts during the company’s latest earnings call.

 We don’t have any major problems with the Apple Watch charger that comes in the box with the device — although nobody has been able to give me a solid answer as to why the cord has to be so damned long. But one design company thinks it isn’t quite portable enough. If you’re looking for a more versatile c port charger, check out this 10-port USB-C charger that offers multiple charging options.

InnovationBox has its own idea to get power to an Apple Watch, and it will fit in your pocket without you having to whip out a twist tie.

Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek isn’t backing down from his anti-Apple stance. In a new interview, he dismisses the Apple Watch as nothing more than an “interesting toy, but not a revolution,” and says that Swatch won’t be jumping on the “computers for the wrist” bandwagon any time soon.

We wonder if Tim Cook and Jony Ive would like some ice for that sick burn?

This week we’ve got a magazine positively laden with great stuff: a piece on how great Apple Music actually is, a look at how veteran music service Rhapsody struggles for relevance, a chat with the young hacker who added custom watch faces to Apple Watch, and quite a few helpful how-to tips.

If you want a full-to-the-brim Apple news experience this weekend, be sure to download the latest Cult of Mac Magazine, or subscribe if you’re into that sort of thing!

Apple is looking to bring even more fitness sensors to your wrist by creating special Apple Watch bands that will take advantage of the device’s hidden port, according to a new rumor.

A 14-year-old modder has apparently managed to replace his Apple Watch’s bubbly default home screen with something a little boxier and more classic: iOS 4.2.1, which launched all the way back in 2010.

Billy Ellis, a self-described “iOS app and tweak developer,” posted a video of his project on YouTube. Check it out below:

“I guess I’m known as that firmware-poking guy,” says Hamza Sood, the young hacker who most recently found a way to create and add custom watch faces to Apple Watch.

Cult of Mac chatted with the London-based 19-year-old via email to find out more about what makes him tick.

In support of the Apple Watch’s increased availability in the U.K., Apple has taken over all 24 windows at the iconic Selfridges’ shopping center in London to promote the new timepiece.

Apple opened a store within a store concept a Selfridges’ earlier this year. The gigantic new displays mimics the Apple Watch’s floral clock faces, with some flowers reaching up to 1.8 meters in height.

Here’s another look:

Sometimes trademarks are about defending brand names you’ve spent years and millions of dollars building up. Other times they’re meant as jealous, petty ways of striking back at people who are doing better than you.

Guess which category Swatch’s decision to trademark Steve Jobs’ iconic “One more thing” signature phrase falls under.

Looks like we’ve got some wear issues on the Apple Watch, especially the Space Gray ones. There are posts on Reddit and the Apple Discussion Forums that show both the Apple logo and actual text etched into the back of the watches peeling off.

Apple Discussions user dougie70w says that he bought his Apple Watch at the beginning of June “and the band started to peel part so bad that I replaced it with an after market metal band that I purchaced on Amazon.”

He’s got an appointment at a local Apple Store today and hopes that having Apple Care will let him get a replacement.

Kansas City Royals coach, Ned Yost was been slapped on the wrist by the MLB for wearing his Apple Watch during games, even though they’re the ones that gave it to him.

Yost received the watch as a gift from the MLB for serving as the American League manager in the All-Star Game, but after the manager was repeatedly seen wearing the device in the dugout, the MLB decided to step in and try to stop him from using it in games.

Hamza Sood – the same hacker who managed to bring Flappy Bird to the Apple Watch as a native app – has just hacked Apple’s wearable to do something just as cool: run custom watch faces.

Your Apple Watch tells you to stand up periodically to maintain your health. It’s a small feature, but it’s actually one of the Apple Watch’s killer apps.

If you don’t have an Apple Watch, though, you’re in luck. There’s a new app in town that does the same thing.

Despite many theoretical improvement, lithium ion batteries remain a very slowly progressing technology. Moore’s Law keeps on helping our gadgets better at conserving batteries, but the batteries themselves aren’t keeping pace with Moore’s Law when it comes to increasing capacity.

But a new innovation by a team of forgetful researchers might change all that: they’ve figured out how to quadruple a li-ion battery’s lifespan.

Some stars are just too big for the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition. One of them is rapper and The Fast and the Furious actor Ludacris, who rocked up at the Teen Choice Awards on Sunday night sporting a custom Apple Watch studded with diamonds.

If you compare the Apple Watch to dedicated fitness tracking devices, it comes up short, and the forthcoming watchOS 2 will do little to address these limitations. Instead, with this update Apple is focusing on helping improve third-party fitness apps.

That’s because Apple sees its wearable as the main component of a fitness platform, with the Activity app as hub. While the built-in Workout app is mostly for beginners, third-party apps will provide the missing features for hardcore users.

This week, Apple has released a ton of new updates into the wild, including better-and-better versions of iOS 8, an iTunes that does Apple Music a bit better, and a Boot Camp that will let you run Windows 10 on your Mac. Try that on your Chromebook.

We’ve got a ton more, too, like killer tips and tricks for the public beta of iOS 9, a slick feature on trailblazer photographers who took selfies back in the day, and some ideas on how Apple Watch should track weightlifting sessions at your local gym.

All that and much, much more in this week’s Cult of Mac Magazine

(Note: Because of Cult of Mac’s recent redesign, some images are not displaying properly in this week’s issue of Cult of Mac Magazine. We apologize in advance — and we’re working on it.)